Regent Botched Airline Flight Home & Will Not Address Its Mistake

[rallydave]

Unfortunately Jason put 100% of the blame on the airline while ignoring the silence in response to the numerous contacts with Regen without any response  and taking no responsibility on Regent's part for the fiasco on disembarking.    While it is true that airlines are a mess, the blame should not be put on the airlines 100% when Regent is partially responsible although less than 50%..

[RetiredandTravel]

In the end he did the right thing.  I think everyone has to take a step back and understand the Herculean task it must have been to manage these companies, be it airline or cruise line.  They were forced to shut their entire business with zero revenue and lay off a large percentage of the staff then re-open in a pandemic and re hire the staff while dealing with hundreds of countries with different ever changing  regulations.  In the case of the cruise lines they had to take on a massive amount of debt  to stay in business and are now up against a fast moving clock to pay it off. The government gave the airlines money so they could stay in business, they had no revenue.   I'm tired of hearing we gave them money.

 

This isn't an argument that Regent didn't mess up, they did but in the end they made it right.

 

Maybe we should cut them all some slack.

 

[Dolebludger]

We need to remember that airlines were given $billions during the shutdown to keep their staff in place, which they apparently did not do. Cruise lines, on the other hand were given nothing, much of their staff left them for other jobs, and the lines are now operating with too many inexperienced employees. So cruise lines have a valid reason for not being up to steam, but airlines do not. There have been scattered reports of on-board cruise experiences not being up to standard. But nothing like the horrors caused by airlines for travelers. 

[ronrick1943]

On 7/22/2022 at 4:39 PM, Pcardad said:

If Regent contacted some, I will assume they tried to contact all. This isn't personal.

 

If the Regent Rep working with your TA dropped the ball, charge it back with your credit card. That will certainly get their attention.

 

 

True, not personal-but a mistake on Regents part.  

[kirtihk]

On 7/22/2022 at 12:47 PM, cwn said:

You do need to go higher up the food chain than just whoever answers the phone first….ask fir department head if you don’t get a satisfactory answer ask for their boss and se d a follow up letter to who you talk to. A paper trail is needed.

 

Also as others have said charge back on your credit card. Something like that  happened to us, did a charge back, cc said they couldn’t do a partial amount but charged back the whole amount. The person at the cc said that would get their attention and it did! We settled so after the charge back hit.

 

Good Luck

The final payment with Regent is 5 months prior to the embarkation date.  So, trying to initiate a dispute with a credit card company will make it 5 months + length of the cruise + a number of days before contacting the credit card company which make around 6 months or longer.  Is it even possible to get a dispute after 6 months from the charge date?

[Dolebludger]

Jason is probably more concerned about poor airline reliability than most others. He is undoubtedly aware that there are many of us former “regulars” who will not book a cruise until this mess with airlines has resolved. Nothing that goes on onboard a Regent cruise these days deters us. Only the inability to reliably get to and from the cruise.

[HotRoot]

1 hour ago, kirtihk said:

The final payment with Regent is 5 months prior to the embarkation date.  So, trying to initiate a dispute with a credit card company will make it 5 months + length of the cruise + a number of days before contacting the credit card company which make around 6 months or longer.  Is it even possible to get a dispute after 6 months from the charge date?

The rule used to be the count starts when you finish the trip.  I do not know if that rule has changed or not.

[Dolebludger]

With our CC, the date begins when the seller breaches the agreement.

[RachelG]

18 minutes ago, Dolebludger said:

With our CC, the date begins when the seller breaches the agreement.

not my experience when Crystal refused to give me back my money after THEY cancelled a cruise.  I was able to get some of it by disputing the charge.  But not my original deposit which had been made almost 2 years prior.  I did eventually get that money back from Crystal--about 6 months after they cruise they cancelled was to have sailed. 

[texasatty]

On 7/22/2022 at 9:40 AM, -Lew- said:

So sorry to learn of your flight issue...

 

For future air travel I suggest using a flight tracking app on your smart phone.  Enter your flight info and open the app on a regular basis.  If a flight can no longer be found you'll know to check the airline's website to determine the reason.  It may be as simple as a change of flight number in which case you'll just need to update the app...or a cancellation. An app will also show changes of flight times so there will be no surprises.

 

I use the free FlightView app.

Good advice! There are a number of choices. I recently switched from Flight Aware to Flighty. I often receive updates from the services before the ones from the airline!